AP Psychology - Unit 6 (Learning) Outline
Subject:
Psychology [1]
Tags:
Behaviorism [2]
behavior [3]
learning [4]
Ethology [6]
Reinforcement [8]
Shaping [9]
Extinction [11]
Neutral stimulus [12]
Stimulus control [13]
Unit 6 ? Learning How Do We Learn? Learning is defined as ?a relatively permanent behavior change due to experience.? Associative learning is learning certain events that occur together. Conditioning is the process of learning associations. In classical conditioning, we learn to associate two stimuli in order to anticipate events, for instance wincing after lighting in anticipation of thunder. In operant conditioning, we learn to associate our behavior and its consequence and thus to repeat acts followed by good results and avoid acts followed by bad results. For example, a cat who receives a treat after performing an action is more likely to repeat that action. 'Habituation' describes an organism's decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it.